


Let's Stop Making The Mistakes Of The Past (And Start Making The Mistakes Of The Future)

by Syntax



Category: DragonFable
Genre: Explicit Consent, Fix-It of Sorts, Historically Accurate Condoms, Identity Porn, Just because it's medieval fantasy, Mentions of other characters - Freeform, Other, Porn With Plot, Time Travel Fix-It, apparently, gender neutral hero, i am your god now and i decide whether or not there are condoms, slowburn, tara and drakath are related and you can pry that from my cold dead hands, that doesn't mean that there can't be safe sex, writing gender neutral porn is hard
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-03
Updated: 2018-07-03
Packaged: 2019-05-17 18:18:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,486
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14836784
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Syntax/pseuds/Syntax
Summary: Hero finds themselves 10 years in the past.  Their plan of action is to not sleep with their archenemy and make sure the tragedies of the future never come to pass.They get one of those things accomplished.





	Let's Stop Making The Mistakes Of The Past (And Start Making The Mistakes Of The Future)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ChaosKorlax](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=ChaosKorlax), [Hnybnny](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hnybnny/gifts).



When you find yourself a good ten years in the past, all you can think to yourself is that at least you're still an adult this time. At least you don't have to eat any really gross cake.

If you remember correctly, you were hit with some kind of spell array by a struggling necromancer who wasn't even sure what the scrolls he was trying to steal did. Maybe he thinks you died. Maybe you are dead.

You suppose in the end that it doesn't matter, because with everything that's happened in your present, with Caitiff and Sepulchure and the Rose, you don't think you're going to be going back any time soon. Not until you've managed to nip some of your future problems in the bud before they even get to the problematic stage.

You tighten the straps of your backpack and head to Swordhaven.

It's roughly the same in the past as you remember it being in the future. A few faces are different, a few stalls sell different things, but you were never a frequent enough visitor in the capitol city to notice much if one restaurant was different or one shop hadn't opened yet.

You head right to the castle and ask the bored guard stationed at the doorway how you might go offering your services to the king. She looks you up and down, probably not all that impressed with you considering your mage's robes and mostly hidden muscles, but she lets you through and tells you to flag down a herald who'll inform the King there's yet another traveler asking to be vetted.

You sit and wait for a good half hour after finding your herald and being asked if you could take a moment since someone else took the challenge ahead of you already and the knights need a bit of time to recover. This is perfectly alright to you—after all, you've got ten years to fix everything, assuming you don't get frozen again. You ask what the challenge is and they (for you can't tell at a glance whether they're a man or a woman and you'd rather not pry) look at you a bit funny before explaining that you're to fight the King's personal guard in quick succession. If you win, you'll receive a more private audience as well as the chance to swear your sword to his majesty.

Oh, you say. You've done that before. This shouldn't be much different.

They look at you a bit funny again, but this time they don't say anything.

A good five minutes later, you are stepping into the throne room where the herald announces your intent to take the challenge and a handful of knights step forward, each bowing and introducing themself in turn as your opponents. You can see King Alteon sitting on his throne (and isn't it odd how he looks so much more than just five years younger than the day you first met him) as well as a rather tall knight standing guard next to him that he seems to be chattering with as the first of your opponents steps into position.

Your fights do not last long. A good lot of them get blows in on you, blows that leave you a bit winded for the next fight, but for the most part you take very little damage compared to how much you're dishing out. You've fought knights before, in your future, and it's almost sad to know that they fight exactly the same way ten years in the past. You would've thought someone would update the training regiments in that time.

You look to the King for more instruction when the last knight yields, not fully believing that your trial is over. You are correct. The knight standing beside the King looks mildly impressed with your performance as he breaks away from the King's side and lazily walks towards you. He introduces himself as Sir Valen, Alden's (how close are they that he can address his King so informally?) right hand man and Captain of the guard. You don't recognize his name. You wonder if he lost favor between now and your first visit to Swordhaven, or if he's not long for this world. It doesn't matter. You're his opponent now, and you ready yourself to fight him.

He absolutely trounces you.

If nothing else, he helps you back to your feet and holds you steady until the stars leave your eyes, laughing a bit in your ear which makes you feel uneasy for some reason you can't quite place yet. King Alteon descends from his throne and congratulates you for clearing the challenge. You look at him strangely, partly due to your slight head trauma and partly due to just plain not understanding him. You lost this fight, you say, so how did you clear the challenge?

Simple, Valen says, startling you for a bit since you weren't expecting the sudden noise—he wasn't actually part of the challenge. He just wanted to test himself against the person that defeated his men so quickly and so soundly. You frown at him while King Alteon asks what prompted you to lend him your strength. You think about it for a moment and decide to just tell him the truth: that you've found yourself a good ways in the past and you're looking to prevent a number of tragedies yet to come before you head back to your own time.

The King and his knight share a few glances and ask you to elaborate, which you do, running down the list of foes both petty and grand that you'd like to deal with before they become an issue—from Drakath to Zadd to Jaania to even Baron Au'Mydas, whose name elicits a sigh and an exchanging of coins between your two listeners. You gloss over describing the Rose in too much detail, or at least King Alteon's hand in their rise to power, but your descriptions of Sepulchure and his forces have both the King and Sir Valen looking rather pensive.

Eventually, the King asks you to stop, claiming that you've given more than enough reason for him to believe your story. He offers to set you up in Swordhaven with the rest of the knights, near the dovecote so that you might have an easier time getting information considering all the various villains you have to locate and keep track of. He'll even give you a salary if you're willing to root out some more current problems in the city as well.

You accept.

In the months that follow, you've made an astonishing amount of progress.

You also find, in between writing letters to various dragonlords asking if they know where Vilmor is and setting up a hospital room and staff for when you eventually work up the nerve to free Jaania again, that you work quite well with Sir Valen. You assist him in repelling bandits from the city walls (none of them Drakath's, sadly) as well as with bandits within the walls—there's a thieves' guild in town, he says, and they've been trying unsuccessfully to bust it open for years.

The two of you end up spending a lot of time together, either fighting whatever needs to be fought or pouring over notes from your recollections of the future, cross referencing them with countless reports and stories until your candles burn low and someone, usually King Alteon or Queen Lynaria (it never hits you until you meet her for the first time that the Alteon of your time never mentioned his wife) tells you to go to sleep.

It should probably surprise you when he eventually asks if you'd like to continue shuffling through reports over dinner one night, but somehow it doesn't—you've never noticed if he looks at you in any certain way, but you've certainly been looking at _him_. What does surprise you is that he invites you into his home instead of taking you to a restaurant, and pan fries the two of you up some fish while you take in the decor and sip his cooking wine. Regardless of the romantic atmosphere, you're both still talking about work until the wee hours of the morning anyways, and you end up crashing in his guest bedroom for the night rather than walking home in the dark.

It was nice though.

You meet him for dinner (or lunch, or whenever you feel like getting a meal while on patrol in the city) fairly often after that, to the point that when you have to leave the city for a few weeks to travel to what will be Konnan's hometown and try to convince them to upgrade their defenses and use flame retardant materials, he gives you a mock frown and asks who he's going to feed his extra groceries to in the meantime. You laugh and punch his arm, but the frown holds strong for a good while until he laughs too, something that you find always unnerves you for some reason.

The following months mark a lot of firsts for the two of you. Many of them are tiny—the first time you invite him over to your house, the first time you ever manage to knock him down in a spar (though he still beats you), the first time you feed him your cooking instead of the other way around for once. You're in the middle of drafting an anonymous letter to Vayle containing some information on trapped souls and a warning that Noxus is lying to her when Valen slides you an envelope from across the desk and tells you that he's taking you to a gala as his plus one. It's your first official date together, even if it is work, and you don't even mind that you spend most of it chatting at the food court about work or shadowing the royal family in case someone tries something. You don't even mind that you don't know how to dance and spend your first time trying stepping on his toes a lot.

When the two of you have your first kiss, it goes like this: You and Valen are pouring over what you remember of the Irismancer telling you about Sepulchure, trying to determine if he's risen to power yet or not and if not how to stop it when a guard rushes in frantically and tells you that Drakath has been caught. You're completely over the moon. You feel like kissing someone and you do—first Valen, then the guard who brought you the news, and then the first person who you encountered outside of the library on your way to Drakath's holding cell. The reality of your actions doesn't hit you until hours later when you're talking with Queen Lynaria about Drakath's possible rehabilitation, at which point your face lights up like a string of Frostval lights and the Queen, ever the concerned healer, asks if you're okay.

Valen has the smuggest expression you have ever seen before on a human being when you encounter him again the next day.

You kiss him again before the day is through.

For the next month or so after that the two of you occupy a sort of limbo where you're not really sure what your relationship is anymore but you don't particularly want to change things up too much in case something breaks. So you act like you always have and focus on your work, neverminding Valen's involvement in it. Vilmor finally gets back to you and thanks you profusely for saving Cryozen—if you hadn't tipped her off in time that someone wanted her dragon's power, she never would've noticed how odd her dear friend Donovan was acting until it was too late. You write her back saying that, as one dragonlord to another, you simply wanted to avert any harm coming to Cryozen, or to the surrounding countryside in the event that someone managed to get him under their control. You also tell her that it would be prudent to encase Donovan in a sturdy prison that he'll find very hard to escape from—perhaps they could build a city in the sky surrounding it so that there would be plenty of dragonlords on hand in case he ever tried anything funny? You even have just the right name picked out.

You're still having dinner with Valen on the regular in between meeting up with him to go over sightings and theories and making sure that crime in Swordhaven is at a suitably low level, and kissing him occasionally between everything else because the man is both insufferable and irresistible and you'd really rather not stop kissing him now that you know what it's like.

You spar every now and then, a test of skill between the King's greatest knights ten years apart, and to your continued annoyance he continues to trounce you every time. You're getting better, he tells you once, pouring a water-skin over your forehead like you asked him to because it was unbearably hot that afternoon, but you've still got a long ways to go. He tells you that he's never lost a match—not in sword fighting at least. Children's games he was too impatient for, competitions of skills he wasn't the greatest at, bets and boasts and challenges for what have you—he's lost those dozens of times, but he's never once been bested with a sword in his hand. You tell him that he's incredibly humble in the face of his continued success and he laughs, causing you to grind your teeth for reasons you still can't explain.

You attend a few more galas with him in that time, and it's at one such event when you're trying and failing not to step on his toes for once that a passing noble asks if the two of you are a couple. The two of you laugh it off and correct the flustered woman, but later in the night when the party is winding down you realize that that's exactly what you and Valen are. It's what you've been for a good while without either of you ever realizing it or admitting it. You don't know why, but the thought of it suddenly scares you.

You resolve not to tell him your worries, but end up spilling your guts four days later over dinner after a few too many sips of cooking wine. He's very supportive, and all too happy to enter a relationship with you, leading you to wonder why you were ever worried in the first place. When you head out of his guest room for breakfast the next morning Valen greets you with a kiss on the cheek and jokingly asks if he should start calling you by any pet names from now on. By the time the month is over, all of Swordhaven knows you're an item.

He asks you once, while you both watch some very capable knights haul an unconscious Jaania away to the hospital on a stretcher because you've finally, finally worked up the nerve to free her from her prison, whether or not he's still alive in your future. You don't know. You say you've never met him in your future, nor had you even heard of him before he introduced himself to you all those months ago. He mulls it over, silent for a moment or two, then asks, if he were still alive, if you would still have wanted to date him ten years in the future when he was old and grey. You laugh at that and tell him that thirty-five is hardly old, and give him a solid maybe, at which point he teases you mercilessly for your apparent interest in older men. You spend a good ten minutes laughing on your way to your next assignment. The matter of his disappearance in your future is dropped.

Still, as you settle down to sleep in his guest room again that night, you can't help but wonder.

What happened to Sir Valen years ago that ensured you would never meet him? That you wouldn't even know his name? Will it happen? Has it happened? Have you prevented it already?

Sleep does not come easily to you that night. No matter. You stayed in the past to undo the tragedies of the present—what's one more life to save?

You fade slowly into a peaceful cohabitation with Valen. The two of you rotate houses depending on who's cooking who dinner that night, with you ending up in his house more often than not because dammit he has to be better than you at this too, doesn't he? It's easy for you to fall into step with each other, in training and researching, fighting and patrolling. You share a lot of similarities with Valen, ones you only noticed the more time you spent with him. He calls you his favorite rookie and you call him your favorite showoff, and he laughs and kisses your nose.

It's nice. Nicer than you ever thought being with someone would be.

They throw you a surprise party one day when you arrive at the castle, a celebration for your first full year spent in the past with everyone. You... Honestly have no idea what to say? On some level yes, you were aware of time passing while you were working here in the past, but since you didn't have any exact dates on anything you were seeking to prevent, you'd never thought to keep track of it.

It's a party, not a gala, so you don't have to dress up and dance if you don't want to, but you end up doing both anyways. They even made you a cake which you are more than happy to help yourself to. You talk with the knights and dance with the princesses (Brittany and Victoria, as after the discovery that they were apparently cousins, Tara had been spending a lot of time helping Drakath with his integration back into Swordhaven society and thus couldn't make it) and before the end of the night you have the honor of seeing the King get drunk off his ass before trying to serenade his blushing wife. Maybe you end up a little tipsy yourself before the night is through, but it's your party anyways and you can drink if you want to.

You find Valen by a stairwell, chatting with a lady in waiting about the merits of cooking with lard instead of butter and pointedly not drinking anything. He barely has time to greet you before you're all over him, kissing him deeply and running your fingers through his hair. You can taste the hors d'oeuvres on his tongue. The breakfast he made you this morning was tastier. There's not a whole lot of liquid courage in your system, but there's enough to get you to whisper close in his ear and ask him if he wants to slip away for the night.

The lady in waiting waves you off with a knowing smile, leaving the two of you to escape the castle through a side entrance and slinking off back to his place since it was closer. You're hanging off of him as the both of you stumble in through the front door, lips locked and hands roaming anywhere they can reach. There's a heat in your belly as you breathe him in, taste his tongue, thread your fingers through his hair. He wraps his arms around you and presses you tightly against him, letting his hands roam as he tries to find the best angle to kiss you. For a brief moment you're separated, gasping for air before desperately joining again.

It's a bit of a hassle to even get to the bedroom. Somewhere in the back of your mind you realize this is the first time you're ever even seeing Valen's room, but you don't really have time to process it before he sweeps you off your feet and deposits you onto the fullsize bed, casually climbing over the footboard with a pleased look on his face.

And what's that look for? you say, likely not as sultry as you would have liked.

Wouldn't you be smiling at the sight of a dream come true? he replies, leaning in close to kiss your swollen lips, hands ghosting the sides of your face as he samples yet more tastes of you. You lay a hand over one of his, lean into him to kiss him more deeply, shivering at his touch despite the many layers you'd put on for the party, despite the warmth he radiates from over top of you.

And _have_ you been dreaming of me? you ask, breathless in one of the moments in between the kisses you share with him.

Mostly in the mornings, he says, a playful tone edging into his voice. And the evenings, and the afternoons, and sometimes while we're working, he says, planting a kiss lower and lower along your neck with every emphasized word, leaving you squirming while he shifts his hands lower to hold you in place.

Sometimes while we're working? you say, as if you hadn't done the same, as if you weren't doing so now. How utterly _scandalous_ Valen—what would the people say if they knew?

His smile is wide and open mouthed, and so is the kiss he gives you in response to your teasing, one that has you holding him tight, wrapping your legs around him, grasping at his hair. Probably, he says when you stop to take a breath, that I'm the luckiest man in the country.

You can't say you disagree.

There's a slight lull in between the two of you. You're happy just lying with him, feeling his heat radiate through your body, feeling his arms around you, feeling his heartbeat against your chest as you breathe him in and thread your fingers through his soft red hair.

Still. You aren't going to deny what the both of you have been leading up to this whole time.

Do you want this? he asks, oddly quiet, oddly pensive. You don't have to ask him what he means.

You smile at him. Yeah, you say, I do. Do you?

I do, he says, firmly, subconsciously gripping you just a little bit tighter as he does. I do, more than anything.

You're still smiling. It's brighter now, though. You push up against him, gently, and Valen leans back until he's almost sitting upright as you walk your fingers along the buttons of his shirt and say well in that case we should probably get this off of you then, shouldn't we?

Your clothes come off quickly in a mess of kisses and buttons and caresses. You trace more lines along his muscles and scars, trail pecks on his collarbone, nibble on his shoulders in between gasping breaths as you help him out of his own clothing. You've seen his scars before many times during the so-called sparring matches he always beat you in, and you're not ashamed to admit they excite you. You've got more than a few scars yourself from your time adventuring, both in the future and the past, though your penchant for magic use means that yours tend to heal in odd colors. Valen is absolutely enamored with them. He seems to love all the various bits and bobs of you that open themselves up to him with every new layer thrown off to the carpet, holding you close and covering every inch of you he can find with kisses.

You stroke him leisurely through the coarse fabric of his trousers as he takes a break from disrobing you to lavish the tender skin along your neck with his tongue, moans bubbling up from deep in his throat as he hardens and swells under your touch.

Oh, how he swells. It's a hassle to undo the fastenings on his trousers, but managing to get them off him and reveal the prize underneath is worth it. His cock is resplendent. You don't know how large it is just by looking at it (and _oh_ , you do enjoy looking at it) but it's longer than your hand and thick enough that you almost can't wrap your fingers completely around. You feel the blood pulse under his skin through your fingers, the warmth of him, the need of him. The moaning against your neck increases in volume as you glide your hand up and down across his length, squeezing him gently from tip to base.

Lords, you want to taste him.

You ask him, like a parched man asks for water, if you can, but he shakes his head. To be honest, he says, I'd much rather take care of you first. He eases you back into the bed as a trail of excitement runs through you, hooking a thumb into your smallclothes, then tearing them away from your body in a fluid motion that has you gasping against the sudden cold air.

You're completely naked before him and he drinks in the sight of you greedily. Just for a moment. In the next moment your hips are in the air, held in place by desperate hands as he buries his face between your legs and does things with his tongue that makes you scream.

You almost cum. Almost, but Valen stops before you can reach that point, setting you down gently on the bed and panting heavily, his eyes half lidded and his chin dripping with your juices.

He's absolutely beautiful.

If not for the aching heat between your legs that still demands to be taken care of, you'd be content to stare at him for a good while. But you really, _really_ want to cum tonight, and you're not about to limit yourself just to looking when you can touch too.

You spread your legs out just a little further. Smile. Tell him you're ready whenever he is.

He drapes himself over top of you, grinds his sex against yours. A low moan threatens to escape from your throat and he swallows it down, giving you a taste of yourself on his lips, swirling his tongue against yours.

You hear him open a drawer on the bedside table, glance idly in that direction to see what you're in for.

Your eyes are beholden to a multitude of carefully wrapped condoms tucked away in a glass box that encompassed nearly the entire drawer, the sight of which is boggling enough to immediately jolt you out of your sex-hazed state. Mostly, it's because you happened to know very well from a life on the road that the treated linen contraceptives were _very_ pricey for something that was generally only used once. But it's also because _why on Lore would one person need so many at once._

You look back at him, dumbstruck as he quietly rolls the waterproof fabric over his cock, tying it loosely at the base with an attached ribbon. You plead with him silently for an answer.

Valen shrugs.

And that's that.

He smiles back down at you and pulls you forward. You wrap your arms around his neck as you come up, straddling his hips and familiarizing yourself with the feel of the condom against your skin. His hands find their way to your sides again and your mouth finds its way to his, taking all you can of his lips as he lifts you into the air again. You feel the tip of his cock brush against your entrance as he positions himself, the heat of his body against you. You see an unasked question in his eyes as he looks at you. You nod.

And your hips go down again, his cock easing into you with the aid of gravity. There's a strangled sound in your throat as you try to process the sensation of being so full. Valen gulps it down greedily, moves one of his arms to the back of your head and holds you close, pushing himself deeper and deeper into you, more than you thought you were even capable of holding.

You feel the ribbon against your skin and know you've taken him all.

You take a moment, both of you, to adjust to the other. You can't remember the last time you were this full. Possibly never. You don't know.

The moment passes. You break the kiss. Look into his eyes. You give his shoulders a faint squeeze, and slowly (slowly) he starts to move.

It's damn near magical.

The drag of the linen against your walls is exquisite, the normally smooth fabric feeling coarser inside of you, creating friction that has you tilting your head back and groaning out his name. You could swear you catch a grin under his half-lidded eyes.

The hand on your hip squeezes your skin as he thrusts back into you suddenly, a sharp cry on your lips at the unexpected change of pace.

You look back at him, betrayed, and oh, that is definitely a grin on his smug little face, staring back at you in defiance and daring you to do something now that the game has started.

 _Well._ This was a game made for two after all.

You cinch your legs around his waist, push yourself off of him slowly and impaling yourself on his cock just as quickly as he had before, eliciting a garbled noise from your lover that you absolutely needed to hear again.

You're definitely playing a game then, trying to see how deep you can take him, how hard you can go, how loud you can be between the two of you as you come apart and join together just as quickly.

You're pretty sure his neighbors are going to hate you.

You're pretty sure you don't care.

You're not remotely sure when exactly you toppled over back onto the warm bedsheets below, but the angle of attack it's giving Valen is utterly delicious. He hovers over top of you, biting at your lips and jaw, leaving lines of pink marks along your neck that are absolutely going to bruise tomorrow. One of his hands finds your needy sex and grinds against it, giving you more of the delicious friction you need, the other hand cupping your cheek as he peppers your jawline with kisses.

Something inside of you coils up and snaps. You cum quickly, suddenly, crying his name in ecstasy as you paint the space between the two of you white.

You half expect him to stop.

He doesn't.

Instead he keeps going, propping your body up on his knees for a better angle and letting out something you could swear was a growl, thrusting into you desperately and unevenly as he rapidly comes undone before you.

Valen's orgasm to follows yours not much longer afterwards in the end, his voice hoarse as he offers your name up to the heavens in adoration with each buck of his hips, holding you tight and kissing you like a man possessed when he can contain himself no longer.

You expect to feel his release when he cries out for the last time. You don't. Evidently, the condoms work better than you expected.

The two of you collapse in a boneless heap on top of his bed, breathless and panting as you soak in the afterglow. Valen withdraws from you slowly, sliding the condom off carefully so that nothing spills out and retying the ribbons on the bottom to create a seal. He tosses it unceremoniously into a trashcan before flopping back down on the bed, his face landing perfectly on one of the pillows. You tell him that was quite majestic. He tells you, a bit muffled by the fabric and feathers, to shut up.

You laugh.

He picks himself up from the pillow and gives you an exasperated look you know he doesn't even mean. And you're right—a few seconds later it melts into a smile. He moves closer to you and gives you a long kiss that you're all too happy to return, a hand tenderly brushing against your cheek. You grab a fistful of the neglected duvet you'd both been rutting over top of and flop it over the two of you, suddenly feeling quite chilly now that there was no longer another body grinding against yours to keep you warm in the naked air. It doesn't completely cover you with your lover's larger form in the way, but you find that you don't really mind. His body is a comfort and you press against him, holding him close as he lazily wraps his arms around your shoulders, staring up at your face with a lovestruck expression.

Lords, but you look so beautiful like that, he says, voice reverent, scratchy, and low—

—and suddenly, utterly, _horrifyingly_ familiar.

**Author's Note:**

> i want you to know that i stayed up three hours past my bed time trying to get this fic completed because the ao3 draft was going to expire the next morning and i will be damned if i had to write all those fucking tags again
> 
> after posting this and finally heading to bed, i realized i completely forgot to add lube. so uh. just assume that some kind of lubrication is one of the treatments added to the linen condoms.


End file.
